Session 5: Constructions of Self

3rd Global Conference

Tuesday 10th November – Thursday 12th November 2009
Salzburg, Austria

Building the Past through the Eyes of the Present: Medieval Hispanic Kingdoms as a Model of Tolerance?
María Jesús Fuente
Department of History, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

Confrontation between Western societies and Islamic societies, and between Muslims and Jews, has led many people to try to build harmony among these communities. This calls attention to look back to the interactions between Christians, Jews and Muslims in medieval Spain. After the terrorist attacks to the trains in Madrid (March 2004), Spanish President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero pointed out that Spain has a long history of interaction among the three religious groups, which might bear on contemporary problems. More recently, US President Barak Obama remembered in his speech at the University of El Cairo that “Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance. We see it in the history of Andalusia and Cordoba during the Inquisition”. Obama saw the history of medieval Spain as a model of tolerance.

In this paper I am going to look at the ways in which contemporary concerns have shaped historians’ depictions of Medieval Iberian societies, and how that distant past is now used by politicians. Despite debates about the role of pluralism in forming Iberian identities, pluralism provides models, whether of convivencia or conflict, that now dominate discussions of western medieval culture in general. The paper traces the roots of this debate back through the centuries. I will focus on how medieval society in Spain dealt with many of the same issues facing us today, such as cultural and ethnic diversity or linguistic difference. Finally I will refer to the scholars, in particular American scholars very interested in the topic, who have helped to spread the knowledge of the Spanish multicultural society, and especially the idea of harmony of a “culture of tolerance”. They are building the past according to the interest of the present.

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The Influence of Cultural Division on Country Image: The Case of Belgium, Flanders versus Wallonia
Lavinia Cinca and Dumitrita Dorina Hirtie
Master of Management and Business Communication, National School of Political and Administrative Studies, Bucharest, Romania and Faculty of Communication and Public Relations National School of Political and Administrative Studies, Bucharest, Romania

In the pursuit of a viable form for the European Union political unification, Belgium is often referred as a model in terms of intercultural communication and cooperation between its two main linguistic communities: the Flemings (Dutch-speaking) and the Walloons (French-speaking). The high degree of regional autonomy and cultural liberty were considered key success factors for making possible the survival of an artificial political construction like Belgium. Yet, bringing together peoples with different cultural identities led to division between the two communities. For instance, in Spain and Northern Ireland group cultural differentiation generated violence, but still in Belgium the conflict did not alter the physical level, mostly remaining at the symbolic one. Anyhow, the conflict affected the country image, being highly visible particularly because of the tensions within the political arena, as not only that the two communities are linguistically separated, but also had different results in the 2008 elections for the Belgian Parliament.

In this paper we are going to monitor Belgium’s image during 4 months (September – December 2008), disseminated through three main Belgian newspapers, with international coverage: “Le Soir” (Walloon newspaper), “Belgium’s Times” (national newspaper), “Flanders” (Flemish newspaper). The interpretation of the media monitoring results will be based on the media image analysis model, a method derived from content analysis. According to the method, we will create an image profile composed of Anholt Country Image (Anholt, 2002) six dimensions: export brands, foreign and domestic policy, investment and immigration, culture and heritage, people, tourism. Furthermore, we will identify the conflict moments and based on their profile analysis we will determine the crisis situations’ effects on the image monitored. The research will eventually bring solutions to manage the group conflict in order to avoid an image crisis and the split of Belgium, also the study highlighting key issues in the EU political construction process.

Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)